Love Everlasting, page 6
“I think it is the perfect time and place. I assume your father arranged your marriage to Lord Armand?”
“He arranged both of my marriages,” she said, giving in to the need to provide at least partial information in hope of placating his curiosity. “Exactly what do you want to know, Royce?”
“Everything,” he answered. “I know almost nothing about you, or about your life.”
“I am not especially interesting.” She knew that excuse wasn’t going to put him off, but she needed a moment or two in which to think about what she ought to tell him - and what she absolutely must keep hidden.
“Nevertheless.” A smile curved his mouth, then vanished quickly, to be replaced by an expression of sympathetic interest that Julianna dared not trust. “Tell me all of it, my sweet. I’m willing to listen.”
How encouraging he sounded, how mild and gentle. Perhaps, she decided, unimportant details would help her effort at concealment.
“Very well, then,” she said, and proceeded to offer a brief account of her life. “I was raised in a convent in Brussels, because my mother was dead and my father spent most of his time at court. I remember being happy and enjoying learning to read and write. My contentment did not last long. I was just fourteen when my first woman’s bleeding came upon me. The abbess sent word to my father at once, and he sent an armed escort to conduct me to court.
“When we met, Father told me the bleeding was a sign that it was time for me to marry. He explained that all men use their children as a way to attain lands and power for themselves. It seemed reasonable to me; as his only child, I was his sole chance to increase his property. He informed me that the arrangements were already made. He and his old comrade in arms, Lord Armand of Dol, had already drawn up the marriage contract. They had only been waiting until I was old enough to bear children.”
“None of this is unusual,” Royce said. “Though I do entertain a strong personal feeling that girls who wed at a later age bear healthier children and live longer, healthier lives, themselves. Go on, Julianna.”
“As I said, I was fourteen. Lord Armand was fifty-six years old. We were married for two and a half years. I was not yet seventeen when he died.” She knew the story was unremarkable, except for one small, yet vitally important detail. “Lord Armand had a son by his first wife. Both the son and the wife died during a winter pestilence. He wanted more children to inherit his lands, and he believed a young second wife would give him the heirs he needed.”
“Earlier tonight, you offered to assist me,” Royce said. “Which makes me ask whether Lord Armand was able to consummate your marriage in the way we just did?”
“Not on the first night. I was so apprehensive about what was to happen that my woman’s time came upon me again. There was blood on the sheet, and because it was my blood, Lord Armand said it provided sufficient proof. He made me swear never to tell anyone, but it scarcely matters now, does it, since he is dead? Later, he showed me how to help him. He tried over and over, night after night. Sometimes, he seemed to succeed.” She stopped, thinking about the nights of her first marriage. After having been possessed by Royce, she knew that even Lord Armand’s apparent successes had been failures.
“He never got you with child?” Royce asked.
“No.” And now she knew why. “He was never completely inside me, the way you just were.” Julianna marveled that she was not cringing with shame at all she was telling him. Still, it was possible that if she inundated Royce with the most intimate details of her marriages he wouldn’t begin probing into the areas she wanted to keep hidden from him.
“After more than a year of trying, Lord Armand declared that I was barren,” she said. “I was heartbroken at his accusation. I had done everything he demanded of me; when we were in bed together I helped him as best I could. I wanted a child as much as he did, perhaps more. I reasoned that if I gave him the heir he craved, he would look more kindly upon me and stop cursing me and blaming me. But then he fell ill and I knew I’d never bear his child.
“I pitied him,” she went on, “poor, old, unhappy man that he was. I nursed him through his last illness, but I could not grieve for him when he died.”
“What happened then?” Royce asked when she had been silent for a time.
“By the terms of my marriage contract and with King Henry’s consent, I inherited all of Lord Armand’s lands. They, along with my dowry and my person, reverted to my father’s guardianship.”
“An arrangement that meant your father grew richer,” Royce said.
“Yes, but he was also growing older, and he had as yet no grandsons to be his own heirs. So he married me off again five months later, to Deane the baron of Craydon, who was a few years younger than my father.”
“Am I correct in suspecting that Lord Deane also experienced difficulty in consummating his marriage?” Royce asked.
“He managed it just once. It was terribly painful for me, and I now question the way it was done. I don’t think he knew how to - well, never mind that. I still hoped to have a child and I knew my father expected grandsons from me, so I offered to assist Lord Deane in the way that Lord Armand had taught me. Deane said I was too ugly for any man to desire, too stupid to endure, and he wanted nothing more to do with me. After the first two nights of our marriage we never occupied the same room and never shared a bed again.
“My father died twelve years ago, still without the grandson he had hoped to gain by all his machinations, so when I was widowed a second time, I became the king’s ward. This time, thanks to the terms of my marriage contract, I inherited all that Deane possessed, including my original dowry lands and Lord Armand’s estates, as well as my father’s own holdings. Now, since yesterday, my entire inheritance belongs to you.” Julianna prayed that after so many intimate revelations, Royce would ask no more questions. She should have known better.
“Is there anything else you’d like to tell me?”
“I have revealed far more than I should have about my late husbands,” she said. “These are delicate and personal matters that I’ve never discussed with anyone else.”
“But you haven’t told me everything, have you?”
“My lord, please, I beg you, leave me some privacy.” Even as she spoke the words, she knew her plea wasn’t going to work. Not with Royce. He was relentless in pursuing the information he wanted.
“Julianna, despite what you claim Lord Deane told you, you are a beautiful and desirable woman. I feel compelled to ask why a husband who holds vast estates and must, therefore, want an heir, would deliberately stay away from his wife’s bed? Especially when his wife is young, healthy, and willing.”
Royce wasn’t touching her and his voice contained no hint of a threat, yet Julianna felt his close physical presence as menacing. Sudden terror gripped her. She dared not falter now, dared not say a single word that would indicate what Deane had been doing for all of those unhappy, frightening years.
While Deane hadn’t wanted his wife’s assistance in bed, he’d had no compunction about using her familiarity with the ladies of the royal court. Discreet by necessity and growing more skillful under Deane’s training, Julianna had aided him in his work, gathering the latest court gossip, listening to rumors, sifting possible facts from highly unlikely conjectures. By the time the first symptoms of his fatal illness appeared, Julianna had made herself invaluable to him. He had never admitted as much, of course. Like so many men, Deane thought women were stupid and untrustworthy, even as he trusted her with information that could lead him to the headsman’s block. Julianna thought he had never fully grasped just how many of his secrets she had learned.
Finally, when Deane had grown too ill to continue, his nephew, Kenric, had assumed his place as an important link in the chain that King Louis of France held so ruthlessly in his royal grasp. During the years of her marriage to Deane, Kenric had always been the contact, the man who carried into and out of France the information that Deane provided. With Deane’s illness and death, Kenric controlled the information that was sent to King Louis.
Julianna believed Kenric was also the man who knew the secret that had haunted Deane of Craydon until the day he died. She suspected Kenric of revealing the secret to King Louis, so he could use it to force Deane into spying for the French.
“You must have an opinion about Lord Deane’s reason for slighting you as a wife,” Royce insisted.
“It’s only a suspicion,” she said, knowing she was going to have to betray Deane in order to save herself. But then, Deane had betrayed her many times during the years of their miserable marriage. He had betrayed his king almost as often. And Kenric had betrayed both men. Saints in Heaven, what a dreadful, twisted web those foolish creatures had woven! “I have no proof, Royce, just a feeling.”
“Tell me your suspicion,” Royce demanded.
“I think Deane did not care for women in the way that men usually do,” she said, choosing her words carefully so they couldn’t be held against her later. “After he deserted our bed, I began to notice that Deane’s squires were always remarkably handsome, and I saw how warmly affectionate he was with them - far more affectionate than he ever was with me.”
“Hmm.” Royce stared at her profile, noting how pale she was. Despite the scandalous possibility she was suggesting, no blush of embarrassment stained her cheek. She had to be lying. She had been evading honest answers all along, regaling him with information out of her marital bedchambers, most likely in the hope that he’d be diverted enough to give up on the more serious and important inquisition.
A clever woman, he thought, according her the admiration such an agent deserved. A dedicated and resourceful spy.
Or, was she a sadly misused, unhappy soul, given away twice in marriage to uncaring men who did not value her, by a father who granted her hand to further his own ambitions? Royce couldn’t be absolutely sure which she was as yet, and where Julianna was concerned, he didn’t want to make a mistake.
Of one thing he was certain; if she thought she’d fooled him, she didn’t know him well at all. For the moment, he would allow her to imagine she had won their minor contest, to think that he accepted all she had told him. He’d learn the entire truth soon enough. He could wait.
Meanwhile, he had done what King Henry required of him. Julianna’s great inheritance was now securely in the possession of Royce of Wortham, just as the king wanted.
The heiress who had brought all of those lands to him remained a beguiling mystery. He was going to enjoy tutoring her in the finer points of passion. He’d stir her carnal desires until she was unable to think of any man but him.
And, he told himself, if she ever gave the faintest hint of having betrayed him or King Henry, he’d kill her without thought or remorse.
Julianna turned her head to look directly at him and Royce felt an unusual tightening in his chest. He told himself it was because, though he was old enough and wise enough to control his body’s urgings, his new wife presented the most delicious temptation he’d met in years.
The next morning Royce was enjoying the sight of Julianna combing and braiding her hair while he rather absentmindedly buckled his belt around his dark green tunic when a sharp rap sounded at the bedchamber door. Thinking it was one of his squires, he opened it without asking who was there. No squire, but a short and remarkably unattractive woman confronted him.
“Good day to you, my lord.” The words were polite, but the voice was not. The greeting issued from a hard mouth set in a scowling face. A scrawny figure clothed in a brown wool dress, black hair only partly covered by a white wimple and dark, very sharp eyes completed the unpleasant picture. Without waiting for permission to enter the woman began to push past Royce and into the room. He moved to block her entrance.
“Who are you and what do you want?” he demanded.
“I am Marie.” Her lips barely moved when she spoke.
“And?” Royce regarded her with his brows raised.
“You do not know me, my lord? Have you not been told?” The woman made an annoyed clucking sound and tried again to move past Royce. Again he stepped squarely in front of her. “I am Lady Julianna’s personal maidservant,” the woman explained.
“No, you are not. Not any longer.” Julianna stood at the far side of the room, clad only in her shift, clutching her comb in one hand as if she intended to use it as a weapon. “Marie, I dismissed you yesterday. You are to return to Dol today, along with the other servants from that estate. I have no further need of you.”
“But you have, my lady,” Marie said in a startlingly insistent manner that was most unbecoming in any servant. “Every noblewoman requires a personal attendant. If I am gone, who will dress you and arrange your hair? Who will carry your messages and return the answers to you?”
“Messages?” Royce looked from the sour-faced Marie to his wife, noting both anger and fear on Julianna’s lovely countenance. Fear of a mere maidservant? Or of what the servant knew? How very interesting. With an inner sigh Royce recognized that it was time to put aside the pleasures of a newly consummated marriage and resume the mantle of the king’s spymaster.
“I do not understand,” he said smoothly, speaking to Julianna. “My lady, this servant is correct. You do need at least a small retinue, among their number a female to assist you in dressing and to attend you when you venture out of doors.”
“Then I will find new servants,” Julianna said. “I have ordered all of my former people to return to their home estates, where they will be well cared for. Marie can become maidservant to the wife of my seneschal at Dol. The wife of your seneschal,” she hastily corrected herself.
“But, why?” Royce asked, offering a bland smile while he observed the play of emotion across her face. “My dear Julianna, I have no objection to you taking your own servants to Wortham. Indeed, I expected you would do so.” He intended to alert his own servants and his squires to pay close attention to anyone who came in Julianna’s retinue and to report to him all signs of suspicious behavior. Her refusal to take any of her own people when she left Caen was in itself suspicious.
“I am capable of dressing myself.” Julianna set her square jaw so her face assumed a stubborn aspect. “I can also comb and arrange my own hair.”
“You do understand that because King Henry frequently orders my presence I cannot always be with you?” Royce said, still employing the pleasant smile that masked his inner turmoil. What in the name of heaven was wrong here? What was Julianna hiding now? Why was she so frightened? The best way to learn the answers to those questions lay in keeping Marie as Julianna’s personal maid, at least for a short time. “My dear, you know you will require someone in attendance when you go to church, or if you want to explore the marketplace, or just stroll through the gardens. Every noblewoman has a maid to accompany her. Suppose you decide to purchase some of the interesting wares the merchants set out each market day? Who will carry the parcels for you?”
“Assign a squire to me,” she said. “Or a page.”
“At the moment I have no one suitable,” Royce said. “I came to Caen so precipitously that I brought only a few retainers with me, choosing to rely on Cadwallon’s men-at-arms for protection along the way. I think you must keep Marie, and perhaps one or two other servants, as well.”
“No! Please, my lord, indulge me in this.”
Royce saw the sudden brightness of unshed tears in her eyes and his heart lurched within his chest. Whatever her true reasons for wanting to be rid of her servants, he could tell she was deeply upset at being made to retain them. He was extremely annoyed at the way her distress was making him feel uncomfortable. He could not allow sympathy to cloud his thinking.
“I wanted to begin anew,” she said, as if she could read his thoughts, “with nothing of my old life following me into my marriage with you.”
Very sweet. Commendable, even. A charming compliment to her new husband. If the excuse was true. Was it true? Or was it a lie?
Royce prided himself on his ability to comprehend the real meaning behind a man’s words or his behavior. He was beginning to realize how little he knew of the real intentions of women. To be precise, how little he knew about his wife’s true loyalties or her intentions. In his inability to understand her motives lay her power to draw him ever closer to her. While he resisted the desire to tear off her linen shift and his own clothes and fling her upon the bed and have her yet again, Julianna’s sour-visaged maid stepped forward.
“I will dress you now, my lady,” Marie said, reaching for the comb in Julianna’s hand. “Then I will arrange your hair properly. That is the order in which your preparations for the day should proceed. You have been going about it backwards.”
“Just a moment, Marie.” Royce spoke in his most commanding tone. “Before you attend your mistress, you must be clear about the terms under which you remain in my household. Assuming I allow you to remain.”
Marie whirled on him, her eyes blazing, and for an instant Royce wondered if she was going to raise her hand to him. The situation grew more interesting by the moment. Did Marie ever threaten Julianna, or lift a hand to strike her? The thought was incomprehensible in the usual order of master or mistress to servant. Royce knew the usual order was not always what it seemed. To protect his wife, he was going to have to set definite limits.
“Julianna, two days ago we made a bargain,” he said, looking at her over Marie’s head. “Now, I suggest a second agreement. You may dispose of all your other servants as you see fit, but you know very well that you do require a maidservant, and especially when traveling. Let us agree that Marie will stay on with you temporarily.”
“For how long?” Julianna demanded.
“We leave Caen tomorrow. King Henry intends to hold his Christmas court at Norwich and he expects us to be there. After Norwich, you and I will visit Craydon Castle before we continue on to Wortham. The exact length of our stay at Norwich, or at Craydon, will depend upon the weather, but we should reach Wortham by early February. Once we are there, since you wish to have a servant not connected to either of your previous marriages, you may dismiss Marie and send her back to Dol. I will provide an escort of men-at-arms to see her safely home.”
